


Becoming

by addormio



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, M/M, really just me playing with words in an attempt to get my emotions about this man out, this is Flint/Thomas at its core but Flint's Thing with Silver is def present
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 13:24:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16368443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addormio/pseuds/addormio
Summary: A look at the many transformations James went through over the course of his life, as he changed from one thing to another to another.





	Becoming

James had gone through many transformations in his life. He had gone from an orphan boy raised by a salty grandfather who told stories of men rising from harbors and disappearing back into them, to a highly regarded and quickly ascending lieutenant in the navy. From an officer sure of himself and his objectivity to a friend, a co-conspirator in a contentious fresh start for an island so different from the one he stood on while plotting it. 

From a friend to a lover. From unsure to unfathomably devoted, so thoroughly in love that he was willing to ignore the reason that came in the shape and sound of a beloved woman so that he might risk everything he spent his life building for another taste of honey and poetry from the lips of his truest love. 

From a lover to a widower, really. From too-quick days of sweet gentle touches and love so tender it made his heart ache and long to join its partner in another chest, to long days and longer nights of sharp and bitter helpless grief. From soft smiles playing shyly on his lips to frowns so deep they engaged his whole face in the action. Shared grief made no less acute by its being shared, instead feeding off itself until it burned yet deeper. 

From a widower to a pirate. From wasting away in anguish and anger to channeling it, forcing it towards a future he would shape into existence if it meant bending reality itself in his image in order to achieve his goal. To never forgetting his pain but tucking it away in a house inland, visiting it with regularity and offerings to keep it in mind, to drown in it and to stoke the righteous fires he needed to keep him warm when his hands touched cold death. To fearsome and loathsome and necessary. From McGraw to Flint. 

From a pirate to a hurricane. From a cog in the machine to the engineer who wrought it into existence, held barely in check until its last remaining tether was abruptly cut. A force of nature so deadly and direct as not to be tested. A soul twice cleaved in half with loss, bleeding so profoundly that it could be cauterized by nothing but watching the world burn as it had. 

From a hurricane to a shell. From an unquestionable leader to someone who needed two voices to speak with the strength of one, the next louder than the first. From a storm to the deafening calm that follows it, absolute stillness that threatens to be more dangerous than the whipping winds and battering seas had been. From an eternal flame to a pile of ashes, unable to do anything but lie immobile and let the wind blow it where it would. A form characterized by exhaustion. 

From a shell to a regeneration. From a broken and hollowed out man to a renaissance of power and cunning, if not quite as omnipotent as its previous form had been. From the leader to a leader, a voice listened to but not above all others. One who may have gotten back on his feet, but not before the earth had shifted under them. A powerhouse but not a king, and certainly not a queen. 

From a regeneration to a friend. From an unwilling partner born of necessity and greed to a true ally and companion. From holding a blade to a shaven throat in malice to holding a blade to a bearded throat in love, a deep unfortunate feeling that hurts more than it heals. Exposing his heart and all its scars and still unhealed punctures without the possibility of reciprocity. 

From a friend to an adversary. From a man capable of nearly single-handedly beginning a war with a major world power to a man powerless to finish it. From ripping apart the establishment board by board from the bottom up in a desperate attempt to reveal the truth underlying it to suddenly halting demolition when his crew member refused to let the project crush them under its weight. From two men with a single purpose bringing them so flush against each other that the borders between them blur, to two men whose grief sets them on opposite sides of the world. One voice shakes back out into two. 

From an adversary to a man awakened from a long and terrible nightmare. From a man with no future besides the one denied to him by the other side of his coin to a man reunited with the other half of his soul. From the sea to the land, from turbulent waves to stable soil under foot. A decade of heartache and rage melting into relief and the soft, gentle love not felt since before the man clasped beneath his clinging hands was taken from him. From kissing in the dark of a well-kept mansion to leaning forehead against forehead in a sun-bright field of rowed dirt. From Flint to someone not quite McGraw, but layers closer to that core than he had been in years.


End file.
